The draw of Trump's spectacle: inhumanity

President Donald Trump’s first 30 days back in power have been an awesome spectacle. Trump’s return to power and his aptly named “shock and awe” campaign constitute a spectacle in how they reflect a disorienting culture, where events happen so quickly, are mediated by the news media and other technology and lack coherence so what is left is an alienated and increasingly atomized public that feels disconnected from one another, lacks any meaningful agency to effect broad social change and seeks empty pleasure and distraction. To that point, Trump’s White House social media account recently posted a video of “illegal aliens” being put on an airplane and deported. Continuing his joyful cruelty, Donald Trump’s Valentine’s Day “greeting” was a digital card posted on social media that included the following poem, “Roses are red, Violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you.” If the leaders of the Democratic Party and other pro-democracy civil society organizations are not moving fast enough, in the correct direction – or at all – it is up to their members and the broader public to force them to. Michael D’Antonio, author of a biography about Donald Trump, previewed much of this in an essay at CNN – which was written in 2017: “In his most authentic moments as President, most recently in Harrisburg, he has made himself into a riveting but also terrifying spectacle that is the shame of the Republican Party and the nation.” In a previous essay here at Salon, I offered a list of keywords and concepts for describing the collective emotions and feelings that many Americans are experiencing in the weeks and months from Election Day to Trump’s formally taking power on Inauguration Day and beyond.